Christmas Nights (15 page)

And she never would forgive herself for believing even momentarily that he
did
want her. Hadn’t she known all along that he had been married to Eloise? Hadn’t she known that there were questions she should ask, doubts she should have? But she had wilfully ignored the inner voice that had been trying to protect her.

Whenever she had asked Max about Eloise he had answered that his marriage to her sister had been ‘different.’

But it hadn’t. He had married them both for exactly the same reason. He had married them because he believed that marriage within their family would help him to gain the acceptance of the islanders and protect their mineral rights. As a person she meant nothing to him. She was simply a means to an end.

‘S
O YOU
are not going to watch the sled race, then?’ Ariadne kneaded the dough on which she was working with a fierce pummelling motion that matched the ferocity of her expression.

‘No,’ Ionanthe confirmed.

‘Hah—I always said that you had your grandfather’s stubborn pride, and look what that got him! So you and the Prince have had a few sharp words? That’s no reason for you to be sitting here in my kitchen sulking.’

‘I know you mean well, Ariadne, but you don’t understand.’

Ariadne gave a cross snort.

‘I understand well enough that our good Prince deserves better than a sulking wife—especially when anyone can see how much he thinks of you.’

Ionanthe shook her head grimly. ‘He married me because of who I am, Ariadne…’

‘Well, I dare say he did. A man would be a fool not to look about him for a wife who can bring some benefit to a marriage. But you can’t tell me that those soft looks he keeps giving you when he doesn’t think anyone else
is looking don’t mean anything, because they do. Look at the way he went out and got you that Christmas tree. It’s as plain as plain can be how much he wants to please you, and a man doesn’t do that for no reason. I’ll tell you now that your father would have had something to say if your mother had behaved like you’re doing—showing him up in front of everyone instead of supporting him. I thought our Prince had chosen himself a good wife in you, but now I’m beginning to think I was wrong. You aren’t just his wife, and he isn’t just your husband. He’s our Prince and you are our Princess. That means a lot to folk like us—even if it doesn’t to you.’

Ionanthe flinched under the lash of Ariadne’s outspoken criticism. The old lady saw things in black and white, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t an element of truth in what she was saying.

‘Quarrel all you want with him in the privacy of your bedroom,’ Ariadne continued bluntly. ‘There you and him can be just like everyone else. But don’t you go forgetting that he’s our Prince and you’re his wife. The people have expectations of you.’

Ionanthe gave in. ‘What is it you’re trying to say, Ariadne?’

‘I’m saying that your place isn’t here in this kitchen, sulking like a child—those days are gone. You should be up on that mountainside, showing yourself as our Princess. It’s what the people expect, even if His Highness himself doesn’t.’

Ariadne had a point. Her people wouldn’t understand why she wasn’t there. Her absence would hurt them, and she had neither the wish nor the right to do that.

She looked at her watch, and as though Ariadne had read her mind the cook told her, ‘You’ve still got time. Tomas won’t start the race without you being there.’

Ionanthe gave her a grim look, recognising that she had been manipulated and outmanoeuvred.

It was crisp and fresh on the snowy ridge above the steep slope down which the home-made sleds would race. In his teens Max had been a keen winter sportsman, so he was no stranger to the cold and the snow. No stranger to that, but a stranger here nonetheless. An outsider, a man obliged to stand alone, without the woman he loved. Instinctively he looked towards the castle. Only he knew how alone he felt, and how painful that feeling was. How much he wished things were different and he could be free to give all his time and energy to showing Ionanthe how much he loved her.

Ionanthe spotted Max immediately, in a group of men clustered together at the starting point.

‘It was lucky I had your father’s ski suit stored away,’ Ariadne had told Ionanthe earlier. ‘The Prince is taller than your father, though.’

Her father’s old black racing suit now outlined the breadth of Max’s shoulders. Ionanthe knew that there hadn’t been a single heart’s breath of a second when she had looked at the men from a distance and not known exactly which one he was long before she’d recognised the suit.

She started to walk faster as she climbed the last few yards of the incline.

Those planning to take part in the race had already claimed their sleds from the waiting pile, and the children were watching excitedly as their fathers and elder brothers prepared themselves. The race should have started already, and the children were getting impatient.

One father was smiling at the baby held tight in its mother’s arms. An unfamiliar feeling tugged at Ionanthe’s heart. The father looked so proud, the mother so lovingly indulgent. It was a matter of great pride and respect to these people that the head of the family showed his bravery and skill on an occasion like this one.

Something made her lift her head and look again to where Max was standing. When she saw he was looking back at her, that he must have been watching her, her heart rolled over inside her chest as fiercely as though it was about to start an avalanche.

She loved him so much.

Her breath made small puffs of white vapour on the cold air as she climbed.

She had almost reached him when a sudden anxious cry went up, and a small boy—no more than five or six years old, Ionanthe guessed, who must have been sitting on his father’s sled—suddenly somehow dislodged the sled, which began to rush down the mountainside with him clinging to it.

The course was fast and dangerous, and for that reason the race was forbidden to children. A wave of horror gripped them all for a split second, and then, before anyone else could react, Max dropped down onto his sled and kicked off in pursuit of the little boy.

Ionanthe had watched the race many times, and always admired the skill of the contestants, but never with her heart in her mouth like this, or her partisanship for one man’s skill so strong.

Max steered the sled more skilfully than she had ever seen anyone do, Ionanthe acknowledged as she joined in the concerted gasp the onlookers gave as he raced downhill in pursuit of the child. The boy was clinging precariously to his own sled, heading right for the darkly dangerous outcrop of rocks that lay outside the formal lines of the run.

Max would never catch the boy in time, and he too would end up crashing into the rocks. Ionanthe felt sick with dread for them both. What woman watching the man she loved risk his life in such a fashion would not feel as she did now? Her heart leapt into her throat as somehow Max expertly spun his sled sideways across the snow.

He was going to try to cut off the other sled—put himself between it and the rocks. He would never be able to do it—and if he did then the extra weight of the little boy would take Max crashing right into them, the child’s life spared at the cost of his own.

‘No!’ Her denial was torn from her lungs on an agonised cry, and then, just when she feared the worst, somehow Max managed to intercept the other sled and turn it so that it was running alongside his own.

The rocks were so dreadfully close, and getting closer. Max was reaching for the little boy, pulling him off his sled and into his arms, then rolling off his own sled so that he became a human snowball.

Other men were racing down the hill towards them. Ionanthe wanted not to have to watch, not to have to see Max’s beautiful body lying still and unmoving in the snow. But she couldn’t
not
look—just as she couldn’t stop herself from following the men’s headlong flight down the steep slope, falling herself a couple of times, only to pick herself up and then wade knee-deep through the snow in her desperation to get to Max.

Incredibly, when she did get there, when she flung herself down in the snow next to his inert body, Ionanthe realised that she was in fact the first to reach him.

Whilst her tears fell unheeded on his snow-frosted face and eyelashes, the small boy he was still holding wriggled out of his grip, wide-eyed and unbelievably unharmed, to be snatched up in the arms of his father who had reached them within seconds of Ionanthe.

A firm strong hand—Max’s hand—grasped Ionanthe’s and held it. Max’s eyes opened and he smiled at her. The voices of the men gathering round them faded as Ioanthe clung to Max’s hand, Max’s gaze. She was only able to say tremulously, ‘You’re alive. I thought…’ The weight of what she had thought brought fresh tears.

Max lifted his free hand, the one that wasn’t holding hers, and brushed them away, telling her tenderly, ‘You mustn’t cry. Your teardrops will freeze.’

‘I thought you were going to be killed.’

‘I couldn’t let that happen,’ Max told her. ‘Not when I hadn’t told you or shown you how important you are to me—how much I love you and value you. How much I respect you, and how much I can’t bear the thought of
my life without you. How much hearing you praise the work of Veritas—work which is so important to me and whose importance I haven’t been able to share with anyone since my parents died—blew me away with pride and delight. We haven’t known each other very long, Ionanthe, but I can tell you honestly that being with you has been like finding the true heart of my life, its true purpose and its true meaning.’

‘Oh, Max…’

As she leaned towards him Max cupped her face and lifted himself up so that he could kiss her.

‘No—you mustn’t,’ Ionanthe protested. ‘You could be injured. You mustn’t move.’

‘I won’t move—if you stay with me.’ His voice grew strong as he added, ‘Stay with me, Ionanthe. Stay with me for the rest of our lives and help me to become worthy of the values and hopes we share.’

There was no time for her to do more than nod her head, because the village doctor had arrived, quickly pronouncing that Max had had a remarkable escape and hadn’t broken anything, but that he was likely to be badly bruised.

The father and the grandfather of the child whose life Max had saved had, of course, to shake his hand and thank him, and then all the men were hoisting him up on their shoulders for a triumphant journey back to the castle. Ionanthe joined the women and children following in their footsteps.

Surely there could be no frustration as tormenting as that which kept the one you loved at your side but out of the
intimate reach you both craved? Ionanthe thought ruefully, as she and Max played their roles in the great hall at the party around the Christmas tree.

They hadn’t even been able to snatch a few precious minutes alone together after their return from the accident, such had been the eager demand of her people to thank Max for his bravery.

Now the youngest children were snuggling sleepily in the arms of mothers and fathers as the final carol came to an end and the last cup of spiced wine was drunk.

A sweet, sharp thrill of excitement mingled with apprehension zinged through Ionanthe when at last they were free to leave—circumspectly saying their goodnights, and even more circumspectly walking down the long stone corridor together in silence. But what if she had misunderstood Max earlier? What if he had not meant those oh-so-sweet words he had said, which had completely taken away the sting of her earlier pain?

Ionanthe’s heart started to beat faster. They had reached their room. Max put his hand on the door handle and looked down at her.

‘It’s gone midnight. That means that I can give you my gift.’

He’d got her a Christmas present? Ionanthe felt guilty. ‘I haven’t got anything for you—’ she began.

Max shook his head and told her softly, ‘Oh, yes, you have.’

They were inside the room, private and shadowed, warmed by the fire in the hearth and even more by their love.

As Max took her in his arms, Ionanthe protested, ‘You’re going to be so dreadfully bruised and sore.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Max agreed. ‘But not tonight.’

And then he was kissing her, fiercely and hungrily and demandingly, and she was kissing him back with all the sweetness of her love and all the heat of her desire. And nothing, but
nothing
mattered other than that they were together.

Still holding her, Max reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and removed an envelope, which he handed to her.

‘What is it?’ Ionanthe asked uncertainly. It looked bulky and formal, and for some reason the sight of it had made her heart plummet.

‘It’s your Christmas present,’ Max told her. ‘Open it and see.’

Reluctantly Ionanthe detached herself from him and opened the envelope, hesitating a little before she removed the folded sheets of papers inside it.

That it was some kind of legal document she could see immediately, but it took her several minutes and three attempts to read the first page before what exactly it contained could sink in.

There was more—a great deal more legal jargon—but the meaning was plain enough: Max was entrusting to
her
a half share in the operation of his foundation.

‘You really trust me that much?’ was all Ionanthe could manage to say.

‘More,’ Max told her truthfully.

He had wanted to show her beyond any doubt how he felt about her in so many different ways, and he could see from her expression that she knew and understood that.

‘Oh, Max. I was so hurt that you hadn’t told me about Veritas. I felt… I thought I’d have to leave… I love you too much to have been able to go on as things were. But in reality I misjudged you just as much as you did me.’

‘We are equally at fault,’ Max comforted her, and he drew her back into his arms. ‘We both judged one another because of what our experience with others has taught us.’

‘You were right to listen to your instinct and to question my reasons,’ Ionanthe admitted. ‘I did after all have an ulterior motive for marrying you. I can’t deny that.’

‘An altruistic motive,’ Max corrected her tenderly.

‘That
is
something we share—our desire to help the people of Fortenegro,’ Ionanthe murmured.

‘And is it the only desire we share?’ Max teased, asking softly, ‘You hesitate—but haven’t we come far enough to be as honest with one another in words as our hearts and our bodies have already been? Would it help if I were to go first and proclaim my love and my desire for you?’

He was caressing her body as he spoke, stroking his hands over her back, making her want to melt into him.

‘I am not a desirable woman—not like Eloise.’ That
pain still remained, and with it some insecurity. ‘You were married to her and—’